B. Ruby Rich to host lecture series on 'New Queer Cinema'

This spring quarter, the 2014 Arts Dean's Lecture Series Issues in the Arts features a series of free lectures by guest speakers from the film course "Lesbian, Gay, and Queer Cinema," taught by distinguished UCSC professor and award-winning film critic B. Ruby Rich.

Running through May 28, the lectures all take place on Wednesday evenings from 5 p.m. to 6:45 p.m. in the Media Theater (M110) at UCSC's Theater Arts Center.

Admission is free, and the public is invited.

Two decades ago, Rich coined the term “New Queer Cinema” to describe a new type of film making its debut at film festivals featuring lesbian and gay protagonists.

Her latest book, New Queer Cinema: The Director’s Cut, was published last year, offering new thoughts on the topic, and bringing together the best of Rich’s writing on the subject, tracing this cinematic movement from its origins in the mid-1980s up to the present.

The book examines the remarkable convergence of independent filmmaking and queer filmmakers in the late 1980s and early 90s that introduced such figures as Gus Van Sant, Todd Haynes, and Christine Vachon to wider audiences.

Rich has served as a programmer and juror at festivals around the world and has been published in The Guardian (UK), The Nation, The Village Voice, The New York Times, and Sight and Sound.

In 2012, Rich received the 2012 Frameline Award at the 36th annual San Francisco International LGBT Film Festival, an honor awarded annually to a person that has made a major contribution to LGBT representation in film, television, or the media arts.

She was also featured on the cover of the San Francisco Chronicle’s Sunday Datebook arts section. The Chronicle noted that Rich’s appearance on a panel at the Sundance Film Festival in 1992 to discuss groundbreaking LGBT cinema, plus an influential article she wrote for the Village Voice, “are considered watershed moments” in the LGBT film world.

This lecture series is sponsored by the UCSC Arts Division, the Arts Dean's Fund for Excellence, the UCSC Department of Film and Digital Media and US Bank.

The lineup features:

Rob Epstein: April 9 (The Times of Harvey Milk, Common Threads: Stories from the Quilt, Paragraph 175, Celluloid Closet, Howl)

Arthur Dong: April 16 (Coming Out Under Fire, Licensed To Kill, Forbidden City, Family Fundamentals)

Rose Troche: April 23 (Go Fish, The Safety of Objects, Bedrooms and Hallways, The L Word, South of Nowhere)